One quarter of all employees receive weekly total cash earnings of $1,532 or more (Media Release)

MEDIA RELEASE

22 January 2015

Embargo: 11.30 am (Canberra Time)

07/2015

One quarter of employees receive weekly total cash earnings of $1,532 or more

A report showing that, in May 2014, one quarter of all employees received weekly total cash earnings of $1,532 or more was released today by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS). It also found that one quarter of full-time employees earned $1,850 or more per week.

The Survey of Employee Earnings and Hours statistical outputs are released every two years and provides statistics on employee earnings and hours paid, broken down by occupation, industry and sex, among other things.

"For the first time, it is possible to break down these statistics by age and rate of pay," Manpreet Singh from the ABS said.

"Collecting age and rate of pay information provides insight into employees as they enter, or prepare to exit, the labour market.

"Analysis of young employees and employees moving toward retirement age provides both employers and policy makers information to plan for the workforce of the future," Mr Singh said.

Employee Earnings and Hours results also provide information on the distribution of earnings and composition of the workforce. The survey found for 55-64 year olds, 16 per cent earned $2,000 or more per week compared to 13 per cent across all age groups.

"We found that 60 per cent of employees were employed full-time and received average weekly total cash earnings of $1,569 and median weekly total cash earnings of $1,339," Mr Singh said.

The average and median are both measures of where the midpoint of a data set is, and the strengths and weaknesses of each can be complimentary. An average can be skewed by a few extreme values, while a median can be skewed by a large number of similar values.

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